Social networks, or social utilities that track and enable connections between users (including people, businesses, and other entities), have become prevalent in recent years. In particular, social networking websites allow users to communicate information more efficiently. For example, a user may post contact information, background information, job information, hobbies, and/or other user-specific data to a location associated with the user on a social networking website. Other users can then review the posted data by browsing user profiles or searching for profiles including specific data. The social networking websites also allow users to associate themselves with other users, thus creating a web of connections among the users of the social networking website. These connections among the users can be leveraged by the website to offer more relevant information to each user in view of the users' own stated interests in their connections.
A system, such as a website, that allows users to interact with the system typically stores a record for each users of the system. These records may comprise information provided by the user as well as information gathered by the system related to activities or actions of the user on the system. For example, a system may require a user to enter information such as contact information, gender, preferences, interests, and the like in an initial interaction with the system, which is stored in the user's record. A user's activities on the system, such as frequency of access of particular information on the system, also provide information that can be stored in the user's record. The system may then use information provided by the user and information gathered about the user, to customize interactions of the system with the user. For example, a website selling books may keep track of a users previous purchases and provide the user with information on related books during subsequent interactions with the system. Information in a user's profile may also be used by the system to target advertisements that are of interest to the user. Using information collected from and about users results in a system that is more efficient and beneficial for both the user and the system.
However, prior systems, including websites, lack the ability to use information associated with a user's social connections or activities to customize and/or personalize the user's experience while using the system. Access to information about the user's social interactions and/or the activities of a user's social connections (e.g. friends, family, co-workers, etc.) improves the user's experience while using the system and increases the chance that the user will use the system in the future. For example, users visiting a website that sells books may be interested in books that their social connections have looked at, book reviews or comments provided by their social connections, and other social network information that might inform their purchases of book from the website. The system itself also benefits, because it can leverage information about the user and the user's social connections to more accurately determine what a user might be interested in. Such a system can use social network information to customize a user's experience and target products, services and/or advertisements to the user.
Typical systems do not possess sufficient information about a user's social connections to customize the user's experience or effectively target advertising to the user. Assembling enough information about a user's social connections for these purposes requires a system to interact with a large number of users over an extended period of time. The majority of websites will not have the resources, expertise, or user base required to build and maintain a system of the scale necessary to capture, organize and maintain a sufficient amount of information about users' social connections and their activities. Thus, users of these systems will have an inferior experience, and the customization/personalization provided by these sites is unlikely to accurately take into account or reflect information about the user's social connections and their activities.
Users typically interact with social networking systems by accessing a web site over a network using a client device, such as a desktop computer or a mobile device. Interactions between users and the social network system can be direct in that the web site that the user accesses hosts a social network application. Interactions between users and the social network system can also be indirect in that the user may access a web site of a third party, which in turn access the social networking system for information about the user for purposes of augmenting the user's experience on the third party web site. In such instances, the user typically interacts with a web site using a client device and, therefore, may be tracked or identified for purposes of authenticating and enabling access to the social network information by the user.
The figures depict various embodiments of the present invention for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following discussion that alternative embodiments of the structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles of the invention described herein.